Dealing with disaster: Shaheen, others must step up

EDITORIALSeptember 14. 2013 12:52AMAs recent events have shown again, Barack Obama's foreign policy is a disaster. Agree with him or not on a strike against Syria, his repeated waffling on the issue is extremely dangerous in the Mideast, where U.S. enemies and allies respect resolution and distrust the lack of it. And let's not forget the Russians and Chinese.

Incompetence, however, is not an impeachable offense. But if people think we can just hang in there for another three more years of this pinball diplomacy, they are dangerously mistaken.

Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger noted last week that a similar President, Jimmy Carter, showed the nation his incompetence in the handling of the Iranian hostage crisis.

"One quick year later," Henninger writes, "the American people turned to Ronald Reagan. There will be no such chance next year or the year after that - not till November 2016."

What to do? American leaders, of both parties, need to step up.

Republicans need to remind themselves that the national interest must come first. Where they can prop up this flailing administration on foreign policy matters, they must do so, irrespective of political gain. Likewise, Democrats need to step up to vote and act in the nation's interest, and not in blind allegiance to this hapless leader.

Here in New Hampshire, that means U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is going to have to change her tune. Her unquestioning, lockstep support for Obama's Syrian policy, even as that policy changed a dozen times in a day, should have embarrassed her as well as her constituents.

Those constituents, the people of the Granite State, will be watching Shaheen closely now. Unlike Obama, she has only one year until the voters can judge her.